At Lawrence, we want to make music an enjoyable learning experience.  We want to encourage our children to be open minded, independent, respectful, resilient, active, creative and confident. The whole school follows the Charanga music scheme which has been adapted to be used on a rolling programme over two years. Through singing and listening to music, the children learn about the organisation of music and develop an appreciation of various genres of music. The children learn about pulse and pitch, composition and performance.

We want to develop creativity by encouraging compositional skills and to feel confident in describing and appraising a range of music.

Curriculum Overview

https://www.singup.org/home-schooling/?embutton - Sing up home schooling page

https://youtu.be/j4mZhv9HS-g - free body percussion workshops 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/bring-the-noise - new set of resources from the BBC launched last year

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ten-pieces - a more established programme of interactive classical resources from the BBC

https://www.classicsforkids.com/ A set of resources about classical composers

https://www.mydso.com/dso-kids/ - Dallas symphony orchestra’s site just for children 

Music at Lawrence

The Lawrence Charanga Musical School Scheme provides teachers with week-by-week lesson support for each year group in the school. It is ideal for specialist and non-specialist teachers and provides lesson plans, assessment, clear progression, and engaging and exciting whiteboard resources to support every lesson. The Scheme supports all the requirements of the national curriculum.

In line with the curriculum for music and guidance from Ofsted, this Scheme moves away from the previous levels and learning objective/outcome concepts to an integrated, practical, exploratory and child-led approach to musical learning.

Ofsted have stated that “We will not always know the learning outcomes” so segregated learning objectives at the start of each lesson are not appropriate. Instead the interrelated dimensions of music weave through the units to encourage the development of musical skills as the learning progresses through listening and appraising, differing musical activities (including creating and exploring) and performing.

How the Scheme is structured

Each Unit of Work comprises the of strands of musical learning which correspond with the national curriculum for music:

1. Listening and Appraising
2. Musical Activities
   1. Warm-up Games
   2. Optional Flexible Games
   3. Singing
   4. Playing instruments
   5. Improvisation
   6. Composition

Resources/Instruments

• A class set or half a class set of glockenspiels - this is the most important resource along with any un-tuned percussion instruments you might have in school

• iPad app - glock or un-tuned percussion app can be used

• Clarinets

• If children play band/orchestral instruments, encourage them to use those instruments in the music lesson

• A combination of the above

Curriculum Impact

Our staff use baseline assessments to regularly assess what the children know as the topic progresses and inform their future planning.

Assessment information is integral to our monitoring cycle.  Our monitoring cycle is developed at the beginning of each academic year.  Monitoring in music includes: lesson observations, work scrutinies and pupil voice.